When A Photographer Goes To Video

HANA KA HOE   (THE PADDLE MAKER) from PF BENTLEY on Vimeo.

Take a good look at the video above.

It is stunning.

The kind of thing you might see on National Geographic, on a good day.

The kind of thing that might have been shot over months by a professional crew.

The kind of thing that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the world of PBS budgeting.

Instead it is the work of PF Bentley.

Bently was a Time Magazine photographer for many years.  During the Clinton Administration, he was the White House photographer for Time Magazine.  Ever see those iconic black and white photos of Clinton in the oval office or on Air Force One?  The kind of photos they printed on two pages, called a 'double truck'?

That was the work of PF Bentley.

In 1992, PF Bentley was in our very first VJ training course in Philadelphia, learning to shoot video.

He learned well. 

He got the very same lessons in that course that we are offering here on NYVS.com.  He also 'cut the carrots'.

Now, like Yaroslav Kofman, whose we we saw yesterday, Bentley is taking his work into the commercial world.

This is not surprising. For years, great photographers did commercial work, whether for magazine ads or corporate end-of-year reports.  Now, as those companies move to the web, they are going to need video. But not Youtube.  Great video.

Take a look at Bentley's work.

It's great video. Shot with a Canon MarkII DSLR camera, just like Kofman, and cut on FCP on a Mac laptop.

Powerful stuff.